


The Blood of the Covenant

by Donna_Immaculata



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Disturbing Themes, Episode: s01e04 The Good Soldier, Gen, Kink Meme, Pre-Series, Savoy massacre, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:38:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3882616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Marsac falls victim to a pagan god.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blood of the Covenant

**Author's Note:**

> This is the 2nd chapter of my older fic [Four Times Aramis Flinched (And One Time He Didn't)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1874601/chapters/4037763), which I'm reposting as a stand-alone to add it to [The Savoy Collection](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/Savoy).

It’s always summer when Marsac goes back to the house of his birth. The sun is warmer here, dissipating a softer warmth than the one in Paris, and the air is balmy and mild. He wades through a meadow of pheasant's eyes, cornflowers, corncockles and Venus’ looking glasses. And poppies, always poppies, their deep crimson like a lake of blood under his feet, and he sees the house in the distance. The windows are winking at him as he approaches, and he knows, he knows that he’s got to reach the house before the sun sets, and he quickens his pace, but his limbs are weighing him down, and he stumbles over a root and his foot slips into a puddle. The water is icy cold, despite the summer heat. Marsac drags his foot out with an almighty effort, gasps and shivers awake. In the freezing tent, his cloak has slipped off his legs. Aramis is curled up against him; he can’t see him in the darkness, but he feels the up-and-down of his ribcage under his arm, the in-and-out of his breath on his neck and the thump-thump-thump of his heart beneath his wrist. It’s safe and comfortable and oh so familiar. Marsac has no wish to move, but the cold is soaking his flesh and he doesn’t want to suffer frostbites for the sake of Aramis’ undisturbed sleep. His love for his brother-in-arms does not go that far.

He lifts his arm from where is rests on Aramis’ chest, grimacing as he hears Aramis’ mutter something in his sleep. Perhaps he can manage to tuck himself back in without waking his friend, Aramis is a sound sleeper and he knows he doesn’t have to be on his guard tonight.

A clink of metal, a rustle of canvas and something that might be a muffled cry reach his brain almost without penetrating his ears. Marsac freezes in mid-motion and Aramis, his soldier’s instincts honed, wakes. “What-” he breathes, but already is Marsac’s hand crashing down on his mouth. Marsac shakes his head without a sound. Their both bodies are taut like harpsichord springs, about to vibrate into life. Marsac lets go of Aramis and, silent like serpents, they both slither to grab their boots and weapons.

Half a heartbeat later, the soft thud that bothered Marsac’s ears solidifies into footsteps. The canvas above their heads is slashed apart and Marsac thrusts up his main-gauche, impaling a masked face just below the chin until he sees the tip emerge through the man’s mouth. The blood that drips down at him is black like pitch boiled in the barrels of hell. Beside him, Aramis, half-lying and tugging up his boots, fires his arquebus. Another man goes down, but the shot has alerted the other assailants to the danger, and several dark shapes descend on them like carrion crows. Aramis throws down his arquebus and grabs Marsac’s, fires again, hits his target straight in the chest, seizes his sword and rolls out of the tent and into the snow.

The waxing moon that hovers between the treetops is not sufficient to illuminate the scene. Even without being able to see all their attackers, Marsac senses their overbearing presence, knows that there are too many for them to fend off. He parries a strike so powerful that it forces him to his knees and rams his main-gauche into the man’s side, piercing his liver. He senses Aramis behind him, and manoeuvres himself so that they are back to back. Protecting each other where they are most vulnerable.

Even as Marsac attacks and parries, he is listening to the sound of blades clashing behind him. As long as he can hear it, he knows that Aramis is still fighting, is still alive. Aramis is more skilled with the gun than with the sword, and Marsac makes a vow in his heart that he will teach him all that he knows, that he will practise with him every day, that he will push Aramis to his very limits if only they get out of here.

They won’t. The enemy is too strong, too numerous. Too well prepared. Too determined to murder them, every single one of them, not in rage, not in revenge, but in coldblooded calculation. “Who are you?” he snarls at the man who is doing his best to impale him on his blade. “Show yourself, you coward! Show me your face!” He can’t bear the idea of dying without knowing at whose hand.

A large man, a man whom he has noticed from the corner of his eye, an ever-looming presence in this knacker’s yard of a battleground, comes fully into view. Marsac is exhausted, fighting two men at once now, but he will take on this one as well. Then, Aramis glides onto the stage out of nowhere and sinks the length of his blade into the man’s back. The outcry that reverberates through the woods tells him that his instinct was right, that man has led the attack, and his spirits soar. Once the leader’s taken out, a company falls into disarray. The musketeers might have a chance to fight the men back, especially since there are others still alive. He spots Lesseps, barefoot and wielding both sword and dagger, advance at a huge brute of a man, whilst Gondrin has forced his opponent down to his knees and readies himself to strike the lethal blow. Marsac’s heart sings. His brothers will not fail him, they will not fail each other, they will push the enemy back and they will stand victorious.

Lesseps’ head comes flying through the air and crashes into a tree trunk. The huge brute has blown it off his shoulders with one stroke of his axe. This is not a gentleman’s weapon, this is not a gentleman, this is a butcher, an executioner, a creature unworthy to cross blades with a nobleman like Lesseps. It’s a peasants’ revolt, and they’re doomed. Peasants will not surrender their weapons because their captain is dead. They know nothing of honour, of rules of engagement. They’re not better than beasts of the forest, and they will slaughter them like they slaughter pigs and horses for meat.

And then, the worst happens. Just as Marsac pulls out his blade from his opponent’s stomach, a cry and a thud make his blood run cold. Aramis falls facedown to the ground, and a trickle of blood blackens the snow beneath his head. Marsac doesn’t cry out; he drops to his knees beside his brother’s body, turns him over and watches the dark eyes, like hollows in a white mask, flutter shut. His forehead, his temple are smeared with blood. Marsac doesn’t think; he pulls up the body, stiff and pliant at the same time, and half-drags, half-carries it towards the shelter of the trees. He crawls into their shadows as if into a house of worship, the woods are the chapel in which he will speak his prayers tonight.

The sash around his middle is quickly unwrapped and torn to pieces. He uses it to still the flow of blood, to wipe off the blood that clings to Aramis’ face like smut. Aramis is flickering on and off, Marsac can tell. His eyes are mostly open, but he doesn’t speak, doesn’t answer when Marsac talks to him, whispering nonsensical words of love and brotherhood and never fear and all will be well, and if not for the tree against which Marsac has propped him up, he’d slide to the ground.

As soon as he’s finished wrapping the makeshift bandage around Aramis’ head, Marsac takes a handful of snow and rubs it into Aramis’ temples. This seems to revive him, and Marsac scoops up more snow and carries it to Aramis’ lips, forces some into his mouth. Aramis coughs, but then he swallows. Marsac licks the rest off his palm and relishes how it melts into water in his mouth, how the simple sip of water reanimates his spirits.

Aramis jerks forward and Marsac steadies him with a hand to his chest. “Stay,” he whispers.

“Who are they?” Aramis whispers back, his eyes fixed on something behind Marsac.

Marsac shakes his head. “Butchers. Animals,” he says.

“Surely they can’t be both at the same time,” Aramis points out, in a perverse display of logic and wit.

“Stay here, Aramis.” Marsac emphasises the command by pressing him more firmly back against the tree. Aramis glares at him, but the silent threat is wasted on Marsac. “You’re injured,” he says. “Stay here, don’t move. I’ll go.”

He stands, but so does Aramis. “We’ll go together.” Aramis closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and another one. To stop his head spinning, Marsac knows. He’s not in pain yet, the pain will come later. It will happen upon him when the rush of blood has quietened down. By that time they will both be dead. “All for one, remember?”

Marsac smiles at those words, their simplicity, naivité even. They’re good words, honourable and befitting men like them: they are all this, until they mean that the life of your dearest friend is forfeit.

“And one for all,” he answers and clasps Aramis’ hand.

They creep back the way they had come, led by sound rather than by sight. Aramis emerges first from the undergrowth. He straightens his back, takes a breath that will have to carry him through the ordeal to come. His last breath, thinks Marsac, fondly but also sadly, because it is a sad thing to know that you’re about to watch your brother die, that you’re about to fall dead by his side. Aramis reaches behind and clasps Marsac’s hand again, just for a second. He crosses himself and takes a step into the clearing.

There’s a flash of light, an almighty crash, the bark of the tree next to Aramis explodes like Chinese fireworks, sending splinters flying in all directions. Aramis drops his sword, throws his arms up, covers his face and head, ducks, recoils and stumbles back into the trees. It was an errant shot, Marsac is sure of it. Nobody could have possibly seen them sneaking out of the woods like ghosts. It’s not the ball that makes his blood run cold, nor the deadly enemy who awaits him amongst the slain bodies of musketeers.

It is the sight of Aramis recoiling bodily from a pistol shot. It is the sight of something so incongruous, so impossible that he’s never even given it any thought. In all those years that they have known each other, he has not once seen Aramis flinch from a musket ball, the point of a blade or another man’s fist. It occurs to him that it’s not the musket that is Aramis’ biggest weapon; it’s his confidence, the air of invulnerability in which he has shrouded himself.

That shroud torn, Aramis is but a mortal man. Marsac loves him even more dearly for it, but it tears at his heart, it scares him more than anything else through which he has lived this night has scared him. He, too, ducks into the undergrowth and follows Aramis, desperate to find him for their both sake. The noise of the battle has subsided, or perhaps he doesn’t hear it anymore from where he has hidden, where Aramis has hidden. It doesn’t matter either way. Aramis is sitting in the snow, resting his folded arms on his pulled-up knees and his forehead on his arms. Around him, shadows sway and shift, and there’s a hush in the air that precedes dawn. This is the darkest hour of the night, and Marsac shivers with a fear that is not of this earth. It is the fear poured into the hearts of men by forests and darkness, the mind-numbing, soul-crushing terror of the god Pan and his creatures; the dread that descends upon even the most rational of men once they encounter the goblins and daemons that dwell in the roots and souls of trees. It is the Panic fear of the Ancients that makes his heart swell in his chest until he can’t breathe. 

“Aramis,” he croaks, before his mind succumbs to the fog completely. “Aramis.” He drops to the ground by Aramis’ side and puts both arms around his injured brother-in-arms. Aramis is very still, and whatever there is left of Marsac’s heart and thoughts, it is all directed towards his brother. He has to keep him alive, this is all he knows, and he clambers around Aramis’ body, pulls him underneath the overhanging branches of a fir and shoves and tugs and heaves fallen branches to build a dry nest for them to spend the night in. He’s turning into an animal, like those men who came to slaughter him. He doesn’t think, he’s building a nest, a den, like the meanest creature of the forest, to hide away, to survive the night, to see the dawn of another day. When he falls, he clutches Aramis like a lifeline. Aramis, whose solid weight serves as a shield. Aramis is shivering, and so is Marsac, and they shiver into each other, until Morpheus descends upon Marsac and delivers him from Pan’s scorn.

~*~ 

The sun rises pale and cold on this Easter Saturday. The snow under his feet is crimson with blood, like a meadow of poppies. Aramis, white-faced and wild-eyed, is talking, but Marsac doesn’t hear. His ears are pounding with the rush of blood, his head is filled with oakum and his mouth with bile. He rips off those remnants of the uniform that still cling to him and stumbles backward into the woods. He can see Aramis forming words and he knows that if he could hear them, they would be his salvation, but he can’t. All that he can hear is the laughter of the god Pan, high-pitched and mocking like the snicker of goats. 


End file.
